In the past, large building structures, such as apartment buildings and condominium buildings have been metered for utility consumption, such as water usage, by metering the main service line, such as the main water line for the entire building structure. In this manner, the utility company has billed the owners for the utility usage as opposed to each individual unit resident or owner.
In the case of a condominium building structure, where each unit is owned separately, the utility company typically has submitted its billing statement to the condominium association of owners, which essentially has assessed each unit owner equally. In some condominium building structures, special supply lines, such as individual unit water supply lines, are installed initially to enable individual meters to be employed for each condominium unit separately. In this manner, billing statements have been submitted to each individual unit owner so that the unit owners are able to pay for their prorated portion of the utility consumption. In this manner, a more equitable payment system is possible.
However, in the case of other types of building structures, such as apartment buildings and commercial buildings, it was not possible to meter individual units in a convenient and reliable manner. For example, in the case of water consumption, there have been no single service lines provided for each unit. Instead, each unit has had a series of pairs of hot and cold water lines for different rooms, such as bathrooms and kitchens, shared in common with other units. This is particularly true where there are several stories to the buildings. In this manner, a whole group of pairs of hot and cold water supply pipes or lines extend to supply vertically aligned units such as an apartment unit. Thus, each unit shares many different hot and cold water supply pipes with other units in the same building structure. Thus, such a building structure is not designed for individually metering units. In this regard, due to the large number of commonly shared supply lines for each unit, it has not been economically feasible, nor convenient, to meter individual units.
Therefore, it would be highly desirable to have a new and improved method and apparatus for metering building structures, where individual units can be metered to enable the residents or users of each unit to be billed a prorated share of their individual utility usage. Such a new and improved metering method and apparatus should be relatively inexpensive to install and to read such meters. Also, such methods and apparatus should be useful for both existing and new building structures, without the requirement for special plumbing or customized building requirements.